Do Economic Incentives Promote Physical Activity? Evidence from the London Congestion Charge
Ryota Nakamura,
Andrea Albanese,
Emma Coombes and
Marc Suhrcke
No 1006, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)
Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of economic incentives on travel-related physical activity, leveraging the London Congestion Charge's disincentivising of sedentary travel modes via increasing the cost of private car use within Central London. The scheme imposes charges on most types of cars entering, exiting and operating within the Central London area, while individuals living inside the charging zone are eligible for a 90% reduction in congestion charges. Geographical location information provides the full-digit postcode data necessary to precisely identify the eligibility for the discount of participants in the London Travel Demand Survey for the period 2005-2011. Using a boundary regression-discontinuity design reveals a statistically significant but small impact on active commuting (i.e. cycling and walking) around the border of the charging zone. The effect is larger for lower-income households and car owners. The findings are robust against multiple specifications and validation tests.
Keywords: economic incentive; health behaviour; London Congestion Charge; geographical information system; regression-discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D04 I12 R48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-eur, nep-hea, nep-tre and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/248276/1/GLO-DP-1006.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Working Paper: Do Economic Incentives Promote Physical Activity? Evidence from the London Congestion Charge (2021) 
Working Paper: Do Economic Incentives Promote Physical Activity? Evidence from the London Congestion Charge (2021) 
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:1006
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().